Right all but abandons gay marriage fight

UPDATE: Response from Maggie Gallagher: “The bulk of this story is fair and true. The headline on a story about a newsletter of mine where I explicitly reject the idea that I am giving up, is not fair and not true. My task going forward is going to be to explain first to myself and possibly to others why I cannot accept the courts rendering of what marriage is and why it matters. This will require us to do new things, not the same old things. And it will require new and creative thought.”
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The Massachusetts Supreme Court decision came amid two decades of ferocious legal, political and legislative battles in Congress and in statehouses, including President Bill Clinton’s signing of the now-defunct Defense of Marriage Act, former President George W. Bush’s backing of a heterosexual-only marriage amendment to the Constitution, and passage of same-sex marriage bans in roughly three dozen states, including California’s Proposition 8.

Evan Wolfson, a gay-rights advocate and founder of Freedom to Marry, said he the Supreme Court could rule on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage by June of next year.

Marriage equality has moved far faster than either side anticipated, and comes amid rapidly broadening public acceptance of gay rights. Seventeen states, including California, and the District of Columbia now permit gay and lesbian couples to marry.

In her blog post, Gallagher wrote, “Hiding or pretending is not going to help us, now. We have to face the truth. And we have to find the love at its heart. And we will have to do new things, not simply do what failed, over and over again, harder.”

Gallagher said she wrote the post in part as reaction to the news that Charles Cooper, the attorney who defended Prop. 8, will host the marriage ceremony next month of his stepdaughter, Ashley, to another woman.

Gallagher said she would tell Cooper, “ ‘Thank you for your hard work, and your service. I had no idea you were working this hard, for so little benefit to yourself and your career, while simultaneously managing a family crisis like this. Thank you for being faithful to the end to your client and our cause. And I wish God’s blessings on you and your family.’ ”

Although she wrote that “I do not see how someone faithful to the biblical or the natural law underlying it can host a gay wedding,” Gallagher also said, “Whatever we do, and whatever we say, we have to be willing to say it, as if to a beloved child of our own family, coming to us with a loving gay marriage.

“There is no line we can draw that pushes gay people ‘outside’ and leaves us free ‘inside’ to be angry, foot-stomping, and morally ‘pure.’ ”

“We are all tangled up in Love with sin, our own and that of those we love.”